There's also the high C Minnie hits when the dashing Johnson gives her a first kiss. It's a game that the normally upstanding Minnie wins by cheating! For example, there's the tense poker game played by saloon owner Minnie (Voigt) and jealous sheriff Jack Rance (Lucio Gallo) for possession of the bandit Dick Johnson, also known as Ramerrez (Marcello Giordani). Unquestionably, however, there are bracingly dramatic moments in both Puccini's music - well conducted here by Nicola Luisotti - and in the libretto crafted by Carlo Zangarini and Guelfo Civinini from David Belasco's hit play The Girl of the Golden West. On the contrary, what doesn't sit with many opera fans is that, as opposed to La Boheme, Madama Butterfly, and Tosca, Puccini chose to keep his music virtually aria-free and concentrated instead - often with great subtlety - on brooding orchestral passages. Nor is it the abundance of the plot's holes. The most genuinely inspired musical number is Johnsons solo in the last act, when it seems certain that he about to be executed - "Chella mi creda libero e lontano" (Let her believe that I have gained my freedom).When Giacomo Puccini finished The Girl of the Golden West a century ago, he wrote a friend, " The Girl has come out, in my opinion, the best opera I have written." So far history has yet to agree with the maestro's judgment, and the return of Giancarlo del Monaco's 1991 workman-like production at the Metropolitan Opera - with Deborah Voigt debuting in the title role - is unlikely to convince large numbers of Puccini lovers to his side.īecause the oopera (also known as La Fanciulla del West) is an unabashed melodrama, it isn't the heated quality of the tale that keeps it from wowing audiences. For the action of the play is too vigorous to find expression by means of the Debussyan manner that predominates in the orchestra. It is not interesting in itself, nor is it made so by the insufficiently varied instrumental accompaniment. They leave to begin a new life elsewhere. But at the critical moment Minnie arrives, and her pleading moves the men to spare him, in spite of Rances protests. Johnson, who has recovered and left Minnies cabin, is caught, and is to be hung.
Minnie proposes that they play cards - Johnson to live, or she to marry to sheriff. He is almost persuaded by Minnie that the fugitive is not there, when, through the loose timbers of the loft, a drop of blood falls on his hand. With Minnies aid the wounded man reaches the loft where he collapses.
Johnson sorely wounded staggers into the cabin. When they have gone and Johnson acknowledges that he is the outlaw, Minnie denounces him and sends him out into the blizzard. Rance and others, who are on the trail of Ramerrez and hope to catch or kill him any moment, come in to warn her that Johnson is Ramerrez. Not wishing to be found with Johnson, Minnie forces him to hide. There is a love scene - then noises outside. Through night and a blizzard Johnson makes his way up the mountainside. After a brief scene for Billy and Wowkle, Minnie comes in. The scene of the second act is Minnies cabin, which consists of a room and loft. She asks him to visit her in her cabin, where they will be undisturbed by the crowd, which has gone off to hunt for Ramerrez, head of a band of outlaws, reported to be in the vicinity but which soon may be back. He and Minnie have met but once before, but have been strongly attracted to each other. In the first act, laid in the "Polka" bar-room, after a scene of considerable length for the miners (intended, no doubt, to create "atmosphere") there is an episode between Rance and Minnie, in which it develop that Rance wants to marry her, but that she does not care for him. Successful in producing "atmosphere" in "La Bohème," "Tosca," and "Madama Butterfly," Puccini has utterly failed in his effort to do so in his "Girl of the Golden West." Based upon an American play, the scene laid in America and given in America for the first time on any stage, the opera has not been, the mores the pity, a success. Place: A mining camp at the foot of the Cloudy Mountains, California. Time: 1849-1850, the days of the gold fever. JOSE CASTRO, a greaser from Ramerrezs gang. JAKE WALLACE, a travelling camp minstrel Baritone Produced, Metropolitan Opera House, New York, December 10, 1910, with Destinn, Mattfeld, Caruso, Amato, Reiss, Didur, Dinh-Gilly, Pini Corsi, and De Segurola.īILLY JACKRABBIT, an Indian redskin. Opera in three acts by Puccini words by C.